Country songwriter Jerry Chesnut, who penned hits for Elvis and George Jones, dies at 87

Songwriter Jerry Chesnut – a member of the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame whose compositions included "T-R-O-U-B-L-E" and "A Good Year For the Roses" – died Sunday at age 87.

The Kentucky native moved to Nashville in 1958 to pursue his songwriting career. It took nearly a decade for him to gain traction, when Del Reeves recorded his "A Dime at a Time" in 1967.

Through the late '60s and '70s, Chesnut penned hits for Johnny Cash ("Oney"), Faron Young ("It's Four in the Morning"), Porter Wagoner and Dolly Parton ("Holding on to Nothing"), Loretta Lynn ("They Don't Make 'Em Like My Daddy") and Tammy Wynette ("The Wonders You Perform"), among others.

Chesnut retired from the music business in 1980, but his two most famous songs, in particular, continued to find new life.

"T-R-O-U-B-L-E" was originally a hit for Elvis Presley in 1975 (and one of several cuts Chesnut had with Presley), and once again climbed the country charts in 1992 with a version by Travis Tritt. The song's famous chorus found a unique way to rhyme words – by spelling them out.

"I got to realizing, not (just) the words, every letter is rhyming ..." Chesnut recalled in an interview for The Tennessean's "Story Behind the Song" series in 2014.

"Everybody was asking me, 'How in the world did you do that?' And I said, 'I don't know. It just happened. That's the way it was.'"

"A Good Year for the Roses" was a No. 2 country hit for George Jones in 1970. In 1981, a version by Elvis Costello (from his Nashville-made "Almost Blue" album) became a sizable hit in the U.K.

"I had no idea who it was," Chesnut said in 2014. "I found out later on. Back then, it made a lot of money. The first check we got in was $60,000, just for airplay in the British Isles. I said, 'What is this guy?' They said, 'He's punk rock.' I said, 'Maybe that's the direction I want to go in.'"

Since you put me down, it seems i've been very gloomy. You may laugh but pretty girls look right through me.

There can be few more beautiful but intimidating venues than the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville, especially when you look down into the front rows and see the composer of one of the ballads that had first brought us to Music City, on what was then seen as a perverse mission for a New Wave band to record a whole album of “country and western” songs.

Of course, that writer was Jerry Chesnut and I’m happy to say that our performance of his song, “Good Year For The Roses” met with his approval on that evening; the only occasion on which we met.

The song, which I had originally learned from the George Jones recording, returned us high into the U.K. charts after a year of indifferent placings and won us a whole new audience that had not necessarily tuned in to our earlier, more frenetic efforts.

That’s the way songs can work; the key to a door, a passport to another land.

From then on, it didn’t really matter what style or tempo a song was labeled or in which city or country it had originated, if it contained a story worth telling then you could sing it with some feeling and meaning.

I’m grateful to Jerry for that song and for repeating that lesson.

I should like to express my condolences to his family and friends.

Since you put me down, it seems i've been very gloomy. You may laugh but pretty girls look right through me.